Monday, January 28, 2013

A poet at Nik Beat's HOWL at Q Space on Jan 27, 2013, by Brenda Clews, 9"x 12", 22.9cm x 30.5cm, art pens on 80lb archival Strathmore drawing paper. (Original sketch and the final with some red pencil in the hair done the next day - scanned images.)

A new style for drawing at poetry readings. And I would like to stay away from naming the poets because that frees me from representation, which has become too much of a burden. Given the dim lighting, that I generally forget my distance glasses, the angle of the poet from where I'm sitting, that there is often a big microphone covering their mouth and so on doing a more realistic sketch is too onerous.

The only thing I will say about this one is that the poet is 'into' zombies and when I showed her after and laughed, saying, 'It's you with zombie influences...' she said she loved it, but was probably only being nice. She has Salem red hair.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Trying a different style because I need to find another way to draw at poetry readings. Relying on the style that is developing for life-drawing sessions, as I have been, is not working - poets giving readings of their work don't pose, the angle is usually not interesting, and so on. Today I picked up some art markers, the kind with fine points at one end and brushes at the other and which use archival permanent inks. I think I will work with my ongoing theme of multiples, multiplicity.

The question was, 'Which is of greater importance: Character, Theme, or Plot? What do you think?'

While I cannot consider Aristotle on plot and character, nor whether 'Waiting for Godot' calls these aspects of written art, drama, novels, into question, I can speak from personal experience.

Plot is the design of a life. However that might be construed. Character is the individual thrust, how the person handles what's thrown at them.

Ok. So plot is narrative. Suspense. What grabs and holds. Character creates plot, I guess. Even in Aristotelian terms. Hubris. Or, oppositely, the magic miracle.

And really, plot, narrative, is what 'sells.' It keeps us hooked on the unfolding of events that may or may not be caused by the characters of the central characters.

In 'Waiting for Godot,' Beckett creates a situation in which the characters await a central narrative, a dominant metaphor, a Godot, who never appears, and yet, like them, we wait, we wait to see if the meaning of it all will manifest and therefore we are thrust into a narrative that holds us in suspense.

What can leave narrative? Plot? The structure of a story that unfolds through action? Setting, elements, crisis, resolution, and so on. I would say poetry.

The writer or director of poetry abandons plot, and yet never fully abandons character. The narrator exists; the narrator through whom the poem is told.

I think of Tarkovsky, whose Stalker I put on last night, and which was criticized as an 'art movie' with no real plot, nothing to grip and hold the viewer.

Yet Stalker is all character, and the movement of the plot is driven by character, the needs, knowledge and desires of character.

Character, plot, theme. It is an unanswerable question. It depends on your preferences.

--

Narrative is certainly part of what constitutes the plot. It's the story, isn't it. And the story is the action, its trajectory through the time it takes to read the book or watch the film. The plot can be plotted, in fact.

But I am speaking of poetry, which often can and has to break free of the normative constraints of an interwoven net of plot, character, theme. Poetry surely is where narrative can break free of plot? Isn't 'Waiting for Godot' more of a work of poetry in this regard?

A poet works with themes and images, and the narratorial voice can be anywhere, there are no rules.

To be sure, there are so-called narrative poets, even last night I was reading Maxine Kumin's 'Where I Live,' a book of poems, and to my mind she is a narratorial poet, a commenter on culture and so on, and while the farm life she describes is presented beautifully and poignantly in her poetry, I wasn't attracted to her stories because the language isn't that interesting, she doesn't call her own judgments and image-making capacities into question, and she remains solidly in the 'controlling metaphor' tradition for structural coherence.

I couldn't finish the book, and will likely pass it on at a used bookstore. Then I opened Laura Kasischke's 'Space, in Chains,' and was immediately fascinated, intrigued, and found my perceptions opened in the inner poetic landscape of the writer, a distantly surreal flux of images that remain contextual, an inner story of a life.

Making me think that while narrative is naturally inclined to plot, though it can be wrestled from it, fragmented or hidden or obscured, context is really the poet's domain.

In some ways, I truly think context is everything.

Context is how we arrive at understanding subjective truth, our positioning in any viewpoint. Context is neither character, nor plot, nor theme (or meaning). When we say there is no objective truth it is because we understand we are always 'in context of.' And I think context is central to creating coherence in poetry, but is not necessarily quite so important in the prose traditions (like fables, short stories, novels, plays, popular films, etc).

Friday, January 25, 2013

In response to a question at Facebook about whether I sketch from life or use photographs:

...sketches are either from life, or directly from my imagination. Occasionally, I take a reference shot with my iPhone if I have a good start on the drawing itself. The camera turns 3D space into 2D and sees it in a way that an artist might not if they were to turn the same scene into a flat picture. Often a drawing made from a photograph looks like a drawing made from a photograph and lacks the energy that doing it from real life would impart. If you use photographs, stop using them at a certain point in the process of drawing or painting and let the energy of the scene speak directly to you. Don't fully rely on them and don't duplicate them - make your own interpretation. Just my take on it.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

...I like to give credit for photos if I can... barely know Norman - he's a fellow poet and artist, and a naturopath. Seems a very nice man, a good friend of a friend. We exchanged phone numbers and he apparently always takes an identifying photo. We both did open mic - his was a sound poem; I like his work very much. I've been trying to go to the Art Bar - weekly poetry readings with an open mic - for 6 months, and made it in -20C weather last night. I love poetry! I love Q Space! :))

Below two quick charcoal sketches I did, absolutely untouched, and of course thinking prolly both women would hate them, so no names for the Internet browsers to catch. :)

And below is a little pic from the Portobello poetry reading on January 5th, the day I started coming down with the nasty influenza bug I am still recovering from. My young poet and artist friend, Jacques, was there. Bänoo Zan was one of the features, an Iranian poet, and she's terrific. And Robert Priest sang, and read one poem. It was a lovely afternoon of poetry and music.

I'm going to be a feature there in July, which will be lovely - such a nice crowd, and the host, Linda Stitt, is a really special woman.

Monday, January 21, 2013

This is the drawing I did last night, and that I'm not too happy with. I used conte crayons and some pastel pencils on what is really a watercolour paper, so the texture of the paper peeps through. I finished a sketch (which I included here) from the very last Keyhole Life-Drawing session whose theme was 'Fight Club.'

I accomplished my main, really my only, New Year's Resolution yesterday, and then last night did a really bad drawing. Wonder if they're related? Lol. I'll try to fix it as best I can and post later. :)))))

Saturday, January 19, 2013

So I tested the Clear Gesso, and it's not bad as far as clarity goes, though Acrylic Matte Medium seemed a bit better even with its slight gloss. The Clear Gesso has a slightly gritty surface when dry, though, making it easy to continue to work with charcoal, pencil, conte crayon. This test image is 4.5"x6", drawn inside the back cover of my Moleskine sketchbook.

Tinkering, this will become another gold leaf type drawing, sharing stages and process. Wasn't enough light when I took the photo. Pencil in my large Moleskine sketchbook. And demmit, I forgot to pick up acrylic matte medium from the art store and it's closed now.

I did this poem drawing in October 2012. At the time, I decided not to type out the words. Frankly, I'm tired of seeing my poetry elsewhere on the NET. Bits of it, a line here or there, a title, or the substance of what I've written reworked. Perhaps I should take it as a compliment that I am somewhat influential, but truly I find it insulting to discover my verbal images being used by other writers, or the style of my work being copied. So I've stopped posting poems and prose poems here in my blog. But I do like to keep an archive, and Google has an incredible search engine for blogs, meaning I can find a poem if I remember only a phrase. So I am encrypting my writing, and have no intention of passing on the password either. Sorry, just tired of being seen as 'raw material' for other writers and not being given credit where credit is due.

Of course, you can read the prose poem in the image. I'm just not making it easy to copy.

And I'll let you know what's going on with publishing - some good things in the works. And, no, I will never self-publish.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

I was given hope tonight watching this. I read her massive study, A History of God, in 3 world religions no less, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, 16 years ago and she changed my thinking. She's an amazing woman with not just compassion, love, insight, but facts at her fingertips the rest of us only dream about. I am so glad to have found her on TED Talks, and to be, once again, deeply inspired by her. I truly believe the way of compassion, the way of conscience, is the only way this crazy globe is going to survive the massive challenges of the future.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Some photographs today of 'Illuminata,' an illustration for my prose poem of the same name with some lines from the poem written into the ink painting. I have used little bits of filters to elicit certain effects because rain white cloudy daylight can be very bland when it comes to gold leaf. :)

About Me

BRENDA CLEWS is a poet, painter, dancer, video-maker, mother, friend, muse, mystery-maker, a lover, a solitary, believer in divine sybaritism. 'While we all have an instinctual sense of what 'art' is, it's from a 'Weltanschauung' that is itself art because it is part of the process of conscious life in a world that is a work of art.

Our universe's creativity is beyond our wildest imaginings.'

Brenda was born in Zimbabwe in the then small mining town of Chinhoyi. When she was two her father, D. Richard Clews, who was a geologist, moved her and her mother to Kafue National Park in Zambia, then the largest game park in Africa, as he joined a mining team looking for copper, and where her two brothers were born.

She cites her early years spent in the jungle, barefoot, living in a compound of mud huts, with many wild animals and the wonderful Ndembu people for her deep resonance with the beauty, strangeness and brilliance of the tribal mind and the natural world.

After the time in the jungle came a year in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and then her father took the family to England where he obtained a doctorate in Geochemistry and accepted a position in Canada. Brenda has lived in Canada since then.

Brenda has a full-length collection of poetry, Tidal Fury, with Guernica Editions, 2016. She has a forthcoming novella, Fugue in Green, with Quattro Books, 2017. LyricalMyrical Press published her chapbook, the luminist poems, in 2013. She hosts Poetry & Music Salons in Toronto.

She has edited university textbooks and creative writing, taught writing, written articles for newspapers, taught Kundalini Yoga, done temporary office work, and dog sitting, while maintaining a reclusive lifestyle of writing and painting. She raised two wonderful children as a single mother. She has a degree in Fine Arts and abandoned a PhD in English Lit many years ago.

Brenda has had solo art shows at York University (2000), Q Space (2013) and Urban Gallery (2014), and been in a number of group art shows including 'Birthtales' (1992) at A Space, 'Birth2' (2004) at Ayer Lofts in the US, '5 By 5' (2013) at The Gladstone Hotel, Yellow House Gallery (2014), SuperWonder Gallery (2016) and Arcadia Gallery (2016). Her artwork has appeared in 'Addiction to Perfection' and as two journal covers and in a poster for ‘ARM Magazine.’

Her poetry has been published in print journals, like 'Tessera,' and 'ARM Journal,' and on-line at sites, including 'Qarrtsiluni,' 'Mothers Movement Online,' and 'The Browsing Corner' (she is not good at submitting her work). She presented papers yearly at conferences at York University and OISE on the maternal body from 2001-2006. Her video poetry has been featured at 'CrossBridge' (an international multidisciplinary journal), and 'Moving Poems ('best poetry videos on the web').

She is a multi-media artist whose approach to a topic may include poetry, painting, theory, dance, recordings, and video. Brenda's oeuvre focuses on the plethora, the multiple callings, the obsessive muse, the prism rather than the spotlight, or on multiple spotlights. She writes, "Where else do you flee? How do you combine yourself?"